1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for managing network devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, due to the deteriorating global environment and economic conditions, requirements for reducing power consumption of electric products have been increasingly made by various laws and standards. With the above-described back ground, also, for multifunctional devices installed in large-scale offices, in order to reduce unnecessary standby electricity, demands for developing a function to control power supply from a remote location has been increasing.
To meet such needs, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-3863 discusses a system for transmitting a command from a management server at specified time, and turning off power supply of multifunctional devices under management. Further, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-163090 discusses a system for managing the number of activated multifunctional devices and not permitting turning on power supply of multifunctional devices of the number exceeding a predetermined upper limit.
In the above-described known techniques, when a user manually starts a multifunctional device that has been switched off by a command from a management server, until the device receives a command from the management server again, the device may be left turned on. Moreover, when multifunctional devices that can be started are managed in terms of the number of the devices, even in the time range in which the devices are expected not to be used so often, the number of the multifunctional devices that can be started does not change. Accordingly, effective power supply management is not always performed.